Red, Weasley Hair
by capableoflove
Summary: Oneshot. Ginny hates her hair, the one reminder of how her life used to be happy.


**Disclaimer: **_Insert witty disclaimer _

_**Author's Notes: Lots of thanks to my beta:** _

I'm such a fool.

Someone once told me that when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. I should've listened to them. Then I would have avoided this whole mess in the first place. If only life had been that simple. But I was stupid and naive and I thought that I could change him. Just like that. I thought that the power of my love was enough to conquer anything. It's amazing how wrong someone can be, especially when they are so assured they're right. I was wrong about a lot of things.

I thought that he loved me.

Silly, right? Malfoys can't love anybody but themselves. The warmest emotion they feel is disdain. Not even hate, because no one is worth that much energy to them. I knew that. So why did I believe him when he confessed his love for me?

You want to know why? He told me he was different. Not his father. He was right. He's worse. The father destroyed my innocence with that stupid diary of Tom's, but the son destroyed me. The father let an enchanted diary do the work, become my friend, let me confide in him and trust him. The son did it himself. He made me love him so hard and so much that even now, when I know the truth about him, I can't find it in my heart to hate him, even though I should. I just don't have that much left in me.

I'm nothing but a hollow shell of what I once was. A shadow. A faded reflection. How can I be whole when he took my heart and never gave it back? When he still has that vital part of me? I miss the way things used to be. The love. The friendship. The trust. I feel the an overwhelming absence for that love every day.

They also say that to have loved and lost is better than to have never loved at all. That's a load of shite. If they'd truly loved and lost like I did, they wouldn't be saying that at all. I wish every day that he had stayed out of my life and out of my heart. Then I wouldn't feel the pain I feel now.

Convulsions tear through me. Every breath I gasp out between sobs, wracks my body with pain. My throat is sore and hoarse from crying and screaming and yelling. My eyes, red and swollen, tracks of crusty salt connect them to my chin. My hair, my glorious red hair, as he liked to call it, is limp devoid of life. Like me.

The worst part is, I still love him. I hate it. I want to hate him. But I relinquished a part of myself to him. A part of myself that I'll never get back. I wasted my love on him, and got nothing but a broken heart in return.

I take one look at my pitiful reflection in the mirror and fall to my knees in front of the toilet. The bile rises up in my throat and I throw up. I disgust myself. Oh how far the mighty have fallen, I think to myself. I know how I look: humbled, dirty, crying, beaten, on my knees in front of a toilet. I used to be proud, but pride disappeared with time. Nothing replaced it. Where it once lay is nothing more than a gaping hole.  
I want to scream and yell at my reflection. I want to punch the mirror for telling such lies, because how could I have become like this? When I was once so happy, how could I have fallen so far into despair? Oh, how I hate my hair. It's a constant reminder of my once greatness. It reminds me of the good times. He used to say he loved it. It was what caught his attention about me. That garish shade of red was eye-catching for sure. I wish I had been born without it. I could have been spared this misery, this hell he has put me through.

I stumble to my feet using the toilet to help myself stand, lead-filled feet drag pathetically on the floor as I walk to the sink to rinse out my mouth trying to lose the acrid taste in my mouth. The attempt fails, but I don't care enough to brush my teeth. I splash water on my face in a vain attempt to freshen up the pathetic reflection that greets me. That attempt fails too and when I look back up I see the same pathetic Weasley from a moment before.

I see the scissors. The scissors give me an idea. I grab them, clutch them to my chest like only they can sustain me. Fill the gaping hole he left in my chest.

I hesitate. I take one last look at my once-glorious hair. Like Draco, I used to love my hair. It was beautiful, unique, different; it was mine. Now it's his. Like my heart. It made me different. It made me Ginny. He stole that from me.

I lift the scissors and watch in awe as my hands work of their own accord. A handful of hair. Gone. I look at the hair in my fist and I silently begin to cry. Tears stream down my face and I bit my lip to hold back the sobs. I can almost pretend I'm not crying that way. It's almost like I don't mind the loss. Almost like the newfound lightness of my head doesn't disturb me. Almost, but not quite. Another snip and another handful of my hair is discarded like garbage on the floor.

I don't worry about it being even, or looking good. I'm caught up in a craze and all I can see is the horrible reminder of the past disappearing from my life.

That's what he did to me. Cut me out of his life. I'll probably never know if it hurt him like it was hurting me or if it was painless. Knowing him it was probably the latter.

He's probably out, laughing and having fun right now.

Celebrating.

Having a good time, oblivious to the pain he causes me.

It's deceptively easy. Painless. To cut one's hair, that is. But each handful of hair that falls discarded to the floor takes a piece of my soul with it. I don't know what I'll run out of first, hair, my soul or tears. My guess is my soul. It's already terribly depleted as it is.

It doesn't take long before it's over. A minute. Five minutes. Ten minutes. I lose track. After it's done I crumple to the floor sobbing into my knees. I look around me. I look at the shattered pieces of my perfect life, the clumps of hair scattered around me, and I just cry.  
I remember the night he threw me away like trash. It was the night we broke up.

I remember going to surprise him at the Manor. He had been stressing over this big project, and I wanted to help him relax. I had brought wine and desserts and was wearing something just for him. It was his favorite color, green, and had little snakes on it. He told me he was going to be working late but I decided to drop by and surprise him anyways. Rather stupid of me.

I should've known something was wrong when he wasn't in his study. It was only, and he said he'd be working late that night. Being the dumb, naive girl I was, I decided to go see if he had already gone to bed. Maybe I would slip in next to him and sleep there. Or maybe not. I had my second clue that something wasn't right when I heard noises coming from his bedroom door as I approached. Like I said before, I was incredibly daft back then.

I thought he might be having a nightmare or something so I rushed in. In that moment my world collapsed. I felt my heart literally break. I saw my future with him shrivel up and die.

I'm sure you can guess what he was doing. I can't explain it to you. It hurts too much to even think about it, let alone relive it in detail. It gets worse though. I could have kept my pride, cut my losses and left, but I loved him.

I cried and screamed and yelled and beat his chest with my fists, but when I had calmed down a bit I did something incredibly stupid. I gave him the one thing he had yet to take from me completely. My last shred of dignity. I fell to my knees and asked him what I did wrong to make him stop loving me. He said nothing. I oh-so-generously offered to take him back. He said nothing. I begged him to take me back. He said nothing. I left. He said nothing.

His silence that night spoke more to me about him than any one of his thousands of words spent professing his undying love for me.

That was nine months, two weeks, four days ago, at eleven past five in the afternoon.

A long time ago, yet I'm still not over him. I cried so much those first couple of months that I thought I was all cried out. But then I found out I wasn't even close. I know now that you can't run out of tears that easily. As long as you have hope, you have tears.

And I always had that hope. Maybe he would realize he was mistaken. That he couldn't live without me just like I couldn't live without him. I was wrong. I've come to realize that hope does nothing but prolong the inevitable. I have reached the inevitable. I have lost all hope. Today in the newspaper I read about his engagement.

To her. She who ruined everything. I wanted to hate her, but I always managed to feel a small amount of pity for her. I always thought that he would discard her just like he discarded me. That thought alone consoled me, lessened my grief. But now it was gone. The article said they were going to have an autumn wedding.

Draco hated autumn. All the gold and red leaves reminded him too much Gryffindors. Maybe that was what happened with me. I reminded him too much of Gryffindor and being Slytherin to the core, he just got tired of it. It always comes back to the hair doesn't it? Red hair, gold eyes, Gryffindor to the core. Except that I'm not.

I'm not brave, courageous. I'm sitting on the floor of my bathroom crying over someone who broke up with me nearly a year ago. That's not brave, that's not courageous. That's pathetic.

That's what Draco did to me. He stripped me of all the courage and bravery I had, all the pride. I have lost everything, the one little comfort I had and hope. What else do I have left?

I have Weasley hair. Wild, untamable, feisty.

I am a Weasley. Broken, pathetic and timid.

I look up into the mirror with disgust. It's uneven, roughly an inch and a half long, it sticks out from my head at all angles. But that's not what disgusts me. It's the color. Even though I chopped it all off. It's still there, red, defiant. So un-me. I can't stand it.

I grab the bottle of peroxide from the medicine cabinet. I pour it into my hair. And I sit there and cry. I welcome the burning sensation, the pain. It shows me that I still have some of me left in me.

After a while I clamber myself into the shower and turn the handle. The cold shower soothes my burns, so that I forget that I'm fully clothed and just enjoy the water. In the shower the water mingles with my tears, washing them away. I just stand there unmoving and let the spray hit me. It's soothing and I don't want to get out. I'm crying silently again. Not a sound comes from my lips, but a torrent of tears continues to pour down my face. I realize I can't hide in the shower forever. I get out of the shower, dripping on the floor, and grab a nearby towel.

Locks of my ginger hair stick stubbornly to the wet soles of my feet but I'm oblivious to their clinging.

At last I look into the mirror.

He stares back at me. Platinum blond hair. But then I realize it's only me. My hair's shorter than his. And you can see that ginger roots glaring through in certain spots. Where my face is sunken and aged his is sculpted and ever youthful. We are nothing alike, he and I.

Finally I smile. There's not an imposter in my body anymore. No sad face where my proud face once lay. Just the sad face of a stranger.

It's less painful to see myself broken and tired in the mirror. I can forget about how I used to be. The unimaginable heights I once achieved. That way the small achievements don't seem so disappointing. I can pretend I'm someone completely new and in a way I am.

Most people won't understand the importance of the hairstyle change. But he will. He'll recognize my words of scissors and peroxide. I know that much. Even if he pretended to never care about me, I know that he did in some small way, in his own Malfoy way. As much as any Malfoy can care, I guess.

The first time I see him after that night, our eyes meet. His cloud over and for a second I think I see pain behind them. But I'm wrong and a heartbeat later they are cool and collected once more. At least he has the decency to look away. And I know we're both remembering. The night.

It was the first night we told each other 'I love you'. The first night we made love. Correction. Had sex, there was no love on his part. It was a night of many firsts. We're both remembering.

We lay in bed side-by-side, facing each other. 'How long will you love me?' I asked him. 'As long as the sky's blue.' he answered. 'How long will you love me?' he asked back. 'As long as my hair's red.' I answered. We're both remembering.

Back then we had both laughed. Back then I thought that would be forever. I was wrong.

(A/N: Feel free to leave a review. I really like those. Most authors do you know.) 


End file.
